Mobile appliances having wireless connectivity, such as cellular telephones, have become so feature-rich that it has become increasingly difficult for a user to be able to access these features in a simple fashion. For example, a single wireless mobile appliance can provide the following features: make and receive telephone calls, take photographs, provide a calendar and update other devices where the calendar can be accessed, allow sending and receiving of emails, allow interaction with the Internet, provide video games, and provide a calculator. Each of these features may have its own menus designed to assist the user with using a feature. The use of menu structures is well established but has proven to be confusing for the ordinary user in part because of limited screen area and the difficulty of building intuitive interfaces.
Usually, a user needs to be able to identify the desired application accurately or it may not be discovered. If the user is unable to identify a desired application, a last resort has conventionally been to provide a file labeled “Help”. However, by the time a user resorts to using the “Help” feature, the user often has little patience to use the “Help” feature, and frequently the user abandons the effort to find and use a feature.
Automated discovery techniques and products are available. For example, a product commonly referred to as “Qix” has been made commercially available. The Qix product directly indexes features or uses synonyms to assist the user with using features of a mobile appliance. Using a mobile appliance having “Qix”, the user may enter data via a data entry device, such as a telephone keypad. The keypad may have keys that are associated with numbers, letters and/or other characters. By pressing a key, the mobile appliance will cause a monitor to display candidates that may be desired by the user. For example, the monitor may display letters, words, and/or numbers corresponding to the pressed key(s), as well as icons representing features that may be provided by the mobile appliance. The user may then select from the candidates, for example by using a cursor and an “Enter” key, to indicate what the user desires.
In addition to supplying literal and disambiguated candidates, the Qix product may use direct indexing, pointers or synonym tables to identify candidates. For example, if a user enters the string 746, the mobile appliance may display the word “pin” and also the word “show” as possible candidates. The mobile appliance might also display synonyms for a candidate. Using the example above, if the user pressed the keys 746, the user might be trying to enter the word “Photo” in order to indicate a desire to use a function of the mobile appliance that is related to photos. In response, the mobile appliance might display the word “Camera” or an icon of a camera to indicate a function provided by the mobile appliance. For example, the function might be the ability to take photographs (i.e. the “Camera” function). As another example, the function desired by the user might be the ability to present previously stored photographs in succession, and so the mobile appliance might display the phrase “Slide Show” or the icon of a projector. Note that the “Camera” function, the “Slide Show” function and/or their icons might be displayed even though the user did not press keys corresponding to the words “camera” or “slide show” because the mobile appliance associates the words “camera” and “slide show” as synonyms for the key presses corresponding to the word “photo”. The extent of this functionality can be determined by a textual dictionary, pointer and synonym tables stored locally in the appliance.
In the existing art, selection of proposed candidates matching the entered sequence may cause an appropriate action to be taken by the appliance. Candidates may reside locally or remotely. However, one class of action that may be required is a broader search in response to an inquiry. Discovery of services or synonyms that are external to the appliance or an associated preconditioned server are feasible, but constrained by the availability of the network and the user's ability to navigate the external services. Usually, the user is forced to engage in a lengthy procedure for each inquiry, and this may be discouraging, thereby limiting the value of the service.